Chapter 2 - The Ghost in the Ledger
The amber emergency lights hummed overhead like a nest of angry hornets as Julian stared down at the document in his hands.
“A dead man?” I repeated, my voice rising in panic as I gripped his arm. “Julian, what are you talking about? Who could possibly sign over your corporate headquarters? That’s impossible!”
“Nothing is impossible when someone has spent five years dismantling your life from the inside out while pretending to be your greatest ally,” Julian said, his jaw tightening so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek. He shoved the papers back into the manila envelope and grabbed my hand with a grip that was almost painful. “We need to get out of this building right now. The babies aren't safe in the penthouse.”
“We can’t just leave,” I argued, though every maternal instinct in my body was screaming at me to run. “The gala—the press—everyone saw us here.”
“Let them look!” Julian snapped, his eyes flashing with a dangerous, urgent fury. “Ethan didn't just stumble onto that photograph by accident. He was set up. Or worse... he’s working with whoever has been bleeding my accounts for the last six months.”
Before I could answer, the heavy double doors of the ballroom burst open.
Three of Julian’s private security guards—men recruited directly from elite federal protection details—stormed into the room, breathless and scanning the perimeter with their hands resting near their tactical holsters.
“Mr. Cross,” the lead guard, a scarred veteran named Vance, reported crisply, stepping up to us. “We received your silent alert. Perimeter is locked down. No one enters or leaves the building.”
“Did you see Ethan Mercer?” Julian demanded.
“Mr. Mercer left through the service elevator five minutes ago, sir,” Vance replied. “He was intercepted by two unidentified individuals in dark suits who forced him into a black town car waiting in the alley.”
A cold dread settled deep in the pit of my stomach. “Force? You mean Ethan wasn't leaving voluntarily?”
“Negative,” Vance shook his head. “Mr. Mercer tried to fight them off before they bundled him into the back seat. The vehicle took off toward the West Side Highway.”
I looked at Julian. The man who had abandoned me six weeks pregnant, who had thrown me out into the rain with twenty-three dollars, who had traded me for a corporate merger in Los Angeles—he had just been snatched off the street outside a Manhattan ballroom by the exact same invisible enemy that was threatening my daughters.
“We have to find him,” I blurted out, surprising even myself.
Julian stared at me as if I had lost my mind. “Find him? Claire, that man threw you out into the street! He left you to go into premature labor alone on a city bus! Why on earth would you care what happens to him?”
“Because if Ethan knows something about who is in my nursery right now, and those people just took him, we’ve lost our only lead,” I said, my voice hardening into the sharp, unyielding tone of a corporate litigator who smelled blood in the water. “And besides... nobody steals the father of my children without answering to me first.”
Julian let out a dark, humorless chuckle, shaking his head. “God help whoever crosses you now, Claire. You really aren't the woman you were six months ago.”
May you like
“No,” I said, turning toward the service exit with my head held high. “I’m much worse.”
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